Friendship

This wasn’t supposed to be a whole long essay but it somehow turned into 400+ words.

Recently I have been accused of not being a good friend to someone because I never hang out with them anymore. My only defense to this is that they only ever want to hang out and do one specific thing, never deviating. This one thing is not destructive nor is it illegal but it is boring to do over and over and over. This person has even refused to go to see a movie in the theater (even for free) because, “If [they] don’t like the movie [they’ll] still have to sit through the whole thing.” The rationale behind that statement is that if they watch a movie at home and they don’t like it they won’t have to watch the entire thing. To be fair, I have on very rare occasions gotten them to come out to other places than what is directly within their comfort zone.

The way I look at it, this is the kind of friendship which is like this street below:

This is problematic because in my mind it should be more like this street:

I am not trying to say this person isn’t a really great guy. In fact, he is one of the most giving people I know. BUT, this is only the case – it seems to me – when he gets his way and everything goes exactly the way he wants it to go. Deviate from those given parameters and suddenly I am not his friend anymore because “I never hang out” with him and only hang out with him when it is “convenient for me.” Well seeing as you only ever want to do one thing – and it has to be done exactly the way you want to do it with no other options on the table – I guess I am only doing it when it is convenient for me. Variety is the spice of life. I like variety, I like going out and doing other things, and sometimes I like just sitting at home. When you get invited to countless other things and even to just come hang out by me don’t get angry when I don’t want to go do this one other thing repeatedly.

Sidenote: Those “Two-way street” signs are REALLY few and far between in Toronto! That picture took a lot of GoogleMapping to find a street which went from being a one-way street and became a two-way street after an intersection necessitating that sign.